Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"Of course, whenever you think best. There's no great need for preparation, since my men and their mounts are ready at all times for whatever I call upon them to do."

The door opened as I spoke and Donuil entered again, lugging one of the boxes of candles we had brought from Britain for his father. He crossed directly to stand in front of the king's couch and then dropped to one knee, lowering the heavy case carefully to the ground, where he prised off the lid, using the flat of his knife to spring the nails that secured it. Athol and Connor watched in silence as the lid was removed and set aside, after which Donuil removed a thin covering of straw and pulled out a single long candle of translucent, golden-looking wax, offering it to the king. Athol took it from him, holding it delicately between his fingertips, evidently in complete ignorance of its purpose.

"It's very fine," he said eventually. "And wondrous pure in its smoothness . . ." A lengthy pause produced no reaction from either Donuil or me, and Connor's blank expression warned his father that no help could be expected from him, either, so that the king was finally forced to ask the question he would dearly have loved to avoid. "What is it, Donuil?"

Donuil grinned now and took back the candle from his father's hand. "It is a gift of light, Father. Light more pure than any save that of the sun itself. Watch this." He rose to his feet and placed the candle on the floor by the case before crossing to where two tallow lamps flickered on a table against the wall. Wetting his finger and thumb with saliva, he snuffed the wicks on both of them, plunging that area of the room into shadow and filling the air with the heavy stink of smouldering. Three more lamps burned at various places in the room, and he dealt with each of those the same way, leaving the fire in the hearth as the only source of light in the large chamber. "Now," he said, moving swiftly to the hearth. "Behold the light of the Christian priests." He knelt in front of the fire, scooping up one of the dried rushes that covered the floor and folding it into a narrow spill, which he lit from the fire. Shielding the small flame carefully in one cupped hand, he brought it back to where we sat and held it out towards his father and brother.

"See," he said. "It's yellow."

I could see from the looks of them that they were hard put not to scoff openly, since it took no great feat of observation to perceive that the flame of a dried-out rush would be yellow. Now, however, Donuil reached down and scooped up the candle from the floor, lighting it and immediately shaking out the flame of the spill. In the comparative darkness, the tiny bead of light at the tip of the new-lit candle burned white and pure, strengthening and growing steadily as the melting wax began to saturate the wick, until the brightness of it far outshone all five of the tallow lamps that had burned earlier. As his father and brother sat rapt, Donuil silently drew more candles from the case on the floor, lighting one after another until twelve of them surrounded him in a semicircle, each stuck to the floor in a congealed pool of its own wax. No one spoke, no sound marred the stillness in the room, and I experienced a feeling almost of awe at seeing the effect such a simple thing as a wax candle could have on people who had never seen its like.

It was Athol the King who finally broke the silence.

"This room has never been so bright after the set of sun, and has seldom seen such brightness even at full noon. What are these things? You called them the light of the Christian priests?"

Donuil looked now at me, for the first time since he had re-entered the room. "Aye, Father, but they are called candles, and Caius Merlyn here thought to bring them to you. He once used them to write by, late at night, as do the Christian clerics. He obtained these long years ago, from a Christian priest, before a battle in which he was wounded, and he had forgotten them since then. I recalled them some time ago, when we were talking one night and, thinking them long since lost, mentioned that you could have made great use of them here. Caius found them and decided to bring them to you, as a gift. We brought three cases. There are two others, just like this one, in our tents."

The king rose up and extended his hand to me in thanks. I shook with him, feeling slightly embarrassed by what I saw as an inappropriate reaction to what was, in essence, a paltry gift. He left me in no doubt that I erred, however.

"Caius Merlyn," he said, his voice deep and low, his delivery slow enough that I could hear, in the two words of my own name, all of the sonorous, lilting cadences of his native tongue. "There can be few gifts more valuable, or more welcome, than the gift of light in darkness. This land of ours is bright and green, rich and full of colour in the summer when the flowers are in bloom . . . but the summer is too short, and all too soon the nights stretch out again towards winter and the gathering darkness starts to make its terror felt again. We are a simple people, but we are hagridden by our fear of darkness. Our Druids and the night-tales of our folk are all concerned—far too concerned—with terror and the threatenings of the dark; with that great portion of our lives when folk can see no trace of the world around them and therefore dreadful things are free to move about them, unsuspected and unseen. The darkness of the unlit night means blindness and deprivation and the fear of madness. The only thing that keeps men sane is light—firelight, torchlight, tallow light and lamplight. Children dread the night, the darkness, and if the truth be told, every grown man and woman dreads it, too, in the rooted depths of their being. One of these candles, burning as it does, could keep an ailing child, or man, in comfort through the longest, blackest night and see him safely into day again. I will keep two of these cases aside, in your name, for just that purpose. They will be night lights for the sick, and I will set my people to providing the same quality for future use. It can be done, and the existence of these you have brought proves that. Men made these things in Britain. Our men will make the like of them here in Eire. Of what are they made? It's not tallow."

"No, Sir King," I responded. "It is wax. Pure beeswax, but I know not what the wick is made from."

"Wax? The wax of bees? Is that so?" Athol looked to Donuil, as if for confirmation, but Donuil merely shrugged to show his ignorance. "And how do you acquire bees' wax without being stung to death?"

It was Connor who suggested an answer to that. "Probably the same way you acquire their honey for your mead, Father. By smoking them into a stupor, then taking what you want."

"Aye." The king's voice was musing. "And we've been doing that for a hundred years and more, yet no one ever thought to burn the wax as fuel."

"Why would they, Sir King?" My question earned me a high-browed look almost of pity.

"Why? Because the possibility was there for the recognition and the taking. Christian clerics thought of it, and Romans before them, I would wager, but none of my people did, though they are no more stupid than any other." He stopped and cleared his throat with a great noise. "Well, at least we can begin to use it now. Again, my thanks, Lord Merlyn. I hope we will find something of equal merit with which to send you on your way when your visit here is ended. Two of my sons have befriended you, and I see much that moves me to commend their judgment."

His words, and their unexpected warmth, filled me instantly and unexpectedly with writhing guilt and made nonsense of my earlier resolve to remain silent, for this night at least, on the other matters, completely unsuspected by him, that lay between us. I took a deep breath and glanced at Donuil, who was watching me closely, and then at Connor, who sat easily on my right, smiling slightly. Suddenly, for no good reason, I felt afraid for the outcome of my venture here in this alien land.